4770K Optimal Voltage

[ShutterIslandGuy]

My 4770K is overclocked at 4ghz and i'm using adaptive voltage for Vcore and Cache.
It uses 0.7V in idle and 1.12V in heavy load which is very high for that frequency.

In override mode i can use 1.06V without any problems @ 4ghz but the problem is that it's fixed and it's great only for gaming or heavy tasks but not for idle mode or easy tasks.

If i specify manual voltage in adaptive mode, it doesn't matter becuase it anyway will use 1.12V.

On stock (default settings) it uses 1.25V in load which is absolutely funny because with 1.25V i am very stable at 4.5ghz .

So what is better for general use @4ghz, override 1.0.6V or adaptive 0.7-1.12V ?

 

[ihog]

There should definitely be a way to use a manual voltage, while clocking down when idle. What's the make and model of your mobo?

Check this guide:

Power Saving Info
The sad part about Haswell is that motherboard vendors do whatever they want. Uncore can be called ring bus or cache ratio or whatever. It's similar with power saving but worse. For MSI G45 Gaming motherboard, adaptive is ABSOLUTELY USELESS as a setting. It does absolutely nothing for voltage under load or on idle. All it does is give you the risk of borking your CPU if you run it with Prime. I've testing this through and through on this motherboard because the result was so counter-intuitive. For MSI G45 mobos, to get power saving you need to have C states set to 7 for maximum power saving on idle. If you want multiplier drop on idle, you need to enable EIST in the BIOS. Having C7 and adaptive vs C7 and override/manual voltage mode made zero difference in idle voltage. There are conflicting reports for other motherboards on what is required for voltage drop on idle. I do not have the money to buy multiple motherboards and do a battery of tests of each motherboard. So I just say, figure it out yourself. The relevant settings are adaptive vs manual voltage, C states, and EIST. No identifiable temperature drop or performance drop was noted by using Cstates or EIST from my tests. If you have a Gigabyte motherboard, adaptive isn't required for voltage drop because... well, you don't have that option to begin with. Just Cstates for you.

A little bit more on EIST: Dropping multipliers on idle has no measurable difference on idle power draw. It does not increase the lifespan of your CPU because clock speed doesn't kill CPUs, voltage does. Clock speed doesn't draw more power, voltage does. Lower clock speed on idle is irrelevant for temperatures as even 1.5v Vcore on idle is dead cool. For MSI G45, the EIST option is "multiplier mode", which must be set to variable instead of fixed. In Windows, your power settings must be set to balanced. You need to restart for the settings to take effect, and once you boot into desktop you must wait a minute or two for the settings to kick in and the multiplier to drop on idle. I literally mean a minute or two, as in 60-120 seconds.

 

[ShutterIslandGuy]

Actually you're wrong , a higher frequency with the same voltage will cause CPU to drain more power.

I always had the C states enabled on my M/B ( AsRock Z87 Killer Fatal1ty).

Also i observed that adaptive voltage only works up to 4.1ghz. When the multiplier is 42 or higher it doesn't matter if you use adaptive as you said because it will always use constant voltage.

I don't have any multiplier setting, i only have the option to enable SpeedStep that will cause the frequency to vary.

I think there is only one solution unless a bios update will be released: Use adaptive on light tasks, use override for heavy tasks.

I've read that the less voltage passes through the CPU , the longer lifespan span the CPU will have.

Anway thanks for your help

 

[ihog]

What? No, higher frequencies at the same voltage will draw the same amount of power, but higher frequencies at the same voltage will give slightly higher temps.

 

[ShutterIslandGuy]

What? No, higher frequencies at the same voltage will draw the same amount of power, but higher frequencies at the same voltage will give slightly higher temps.

TDP grows with the frequency even if you don't raise the voltage. I observed this when i overclocked my laptop's GPU.
Aida64 displayed an increased Power Consuption. Otherwise you can't explain why the temps are higher.
I also asked this question to my embedded programming teacher and he also confirmed this.